The White House on Tuesday welcomed a invoice that will enable the United States to ban Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated in a press release.
The invoice was backed by Mark Warner, a senior US senator from the Democratic occasion, and John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, in a uncommon act of political entente by US lawmakers.
“We applaud the bipartisan group of senators, led by Senators Warner and Thune, who today introduced the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” Sullivan stated.
The bipartisan invoice “would empower the United States government to prevent certain foreign governments from exploiting technology services… in a way that poses risks to Americans’ sensitive data and our national security,” Sullivan stated in a press release.
The Senate invoice and the backing of the White House accelerated the political momentum in opposition to TikTok, which can be the goal of a separate piece of laws within the US House of Representatives.
“Today, the threat that everyone is talking about is TikTok, and how it could enable surveillance by the Chinese Communist Party, or facilitate the spread of malign influence campaigns in the US,” Senator Warner stated in a press release.
“Before TikTok, nonetheless, it was Huawei and ZTE, which threatened our nation’s telecommunications networks. And before that, it was Russia’s Kaspersky Lab, which threatened the security of government and corporate devices,” stated Warner.
Appearing robust on China is likely one of the uncommon points with potential for bipartisan assist in each the Republican-run House and the Senate, the place Biden’s Democratic Party holds a majority.
With Congress and the White House aligned on the concept a regulation is critical to curb the powers of TikTok, the possibilities of the laws making it into regulation are vastly elevated.
TikTok is owned by Chinese agency ByteDance and has greater than a billion customers worldwide together with over 100 million within the US, the place it has change into a cultural pressure, particularly for younger individuals.
TikTok reacted by once more pointing to its months of negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment within the United States (CFIUS), a authorities company that assesses overseas investments’ dangers to US nationwide safety.
“The Biden Administration does not need additional authority from Congress to address national security concerns about TikTok: It can approve the deal negotiated with CFIUS over two years that it has spent the last six months reviewing,” TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter instructed AFP.
Reflecting considerations voiced by free speech activists, she likened a US ban to a “ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide.”
The laws comes after US authorities staff in January had been banned from putting in TikTok on their units.
Civil servants on the European Union, in addition to in Canada and Denmark are additionally barred from having TikTok on their telephones.
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